The following is the Sherwood Family Christmas letter I sent out this year….
It’s late in the day, Dec. 15, and our annual Christmas letter is just one of many things I have left to do despite a countdown to Christmas that will soon enter single digits. Sitting across the living room from me is our Christmas tree, which has been standing in our living room for six days now, and it is still not decorated. We have been waiting for a time when the planets align and all of us are home sometime before bedtime in order to decorate it. Between concerts, basketball games, play practice and the chaos of life, we have not had a chance to decorate the tree before today.
As I write this letter, the children are busy hanging ornaments and garland on the tree. They are singing along to the Christmas music playing, “I saw Mommy kissing Santa Claus,” punctuated with, “Maxine, no,” “Mom, they are putting my ornaments on the tree,” “I’m doing this,” “Stop that,” “There’s more,” “Amanda, I was doing the gold,” “You don’t need to , wait…,” “JusTIN….” Ah, the holidays are such a wonderful time for families to make memories worth keeping, yes?
The level of sibling sparring has increased significantly in 2007, and I don’t think it is a coincidence that this is the year we have our first teenager in our household. Steve and I have spent most of 2007 picking up and dropping off various children at various sports activities. When not playing basketball or baseball, our children have become plugged into their computers, video games, iPods and MP3 players.
I hesitate to note that 2007 saw the breakdown of just about every major appliance that I once swore I could NOT live without: my laptop, the washing machine AND the dish washer. It turns out, I can live without the dish washer because I had the good sense to give birth to four replacement dishwashers approximately a decade ago. The wash machine and laptop, however, are appliances that are required, and thanks to Lowe’s and eBay both were resurrected. My hesitation to mention this is that some other appliance will overhear and decide to break as well.
This year we spent a lot of time camping with extended family and enjoying each other despite the sibling rivalry. During the Memorial Day camping trip, Autumn won $10 after her dad and grandma each bet her $5 she wouldn’t ride her bicycle into the lake. It took a few attempts, but a soggy Autumn soon collected her money, and best of all, it was all caught on camera. Within seconds of Autumn getting soaked, Steve joined her after his mom pushed him in. As Justin would tell you, someone getting pushed in the lake is a family tradition. In September, Steve lined the four children up along the edge of the lake on the ruse they were getting their photo taken. No one suspected a thing as he pushed them in, although Amanda is quick and her dunk was delayed but inevitable.
At 13, Autumn is in the eighth grade and attends the high school. She qualified to take the ACT in February, which will earn her a scholarship to an educational-type camp next summer. She has been attending creative writing at the local community college, and when she is done, she will have 3 college credits for the course. She attends every Friday through March, and it is the same program that I once did back when I was in 8th grade. She plays on the basketball team, and I am not supposed to tell you about the two points she scored for the other team during one of her games.
At 12, Amanda is becoming ornery and cantankerous, or in other words, she is acting like a teen-ager where everything her younger brother and sister do is horrible and messing up her life. She continues to play softball in Little League, and this year as a seventh-grader, she was finally eligible to play sports as a Bobcat. She spent the fall playing volleyball, and she is currently playing basketball. She hopes to participate in track in the spring. She is pretty busy with practice and homework and her attempts to convince her mom that a clean room is not necessary.
Maxine, 10, is in fifth-grade and playing 4-H basketball. She went to Lansing on a field trip where she attended the Nutcracker ballet and visited the capitol building and a science museum where she walked through a big mouth. She helped her teacher make a Thanksgiving dinner for her class where her big accomplishment was “sticking her hand up a turkey’s butt.” She will soon be performing in a school play about aliens and Christmas. She still giggles and smiles at the slightest provocation, and she seems to have made it her hobby to annoy her siblings in any way possible.
Justin, 8, spent a big portion of his summer reading the entire Harry Potters series. He finished book six just in time to start book seven when it was released in July although he had to wait until Autumn and I finished it. He is in third-grade and playing 4-H basketball when he manages to take his hands out of his pockets. He discovered the joy of dirt-biking this summer, and he was sad to see the bike put away when colder weather arrived. He doesn’t have any problems in completing his school work, but he is taking his own sweet time in figuring out how to keep his ears clean and stop chewing his fingernails.
I graduated in August with a master’s of art in English composition, so I can no longer use my “I’m not an English major” excuse when Steve corrects my pronunciation. Steve enjoys it way too much when I say things like “pooled pork” instead of “pulled pork” when announcing our dinner menu. He always asks if my secret ingredient is chlorine. I am teaching several college classes and tutoring as well as still doing a little bit of writing for the newspaper.
In September Steve was able to take Autumn hunting as part of Michigan’s youth hunt. As the weekend was drawing to a close, Steve was right there next to her when Autumn shot her first deer, a doe, and the shot was perfectly placed. The doe dropped immediately. He gutted the doe, but Autumn did most of the dragging-it-out-of-the-woods part. In bow season, Steve landed his own doe, but he didn’t get anything during rifle season. With muzzle-loading season starting this past weekend, he is once again hunting for a trophy buck.
The tree is done, which means the whining has temporarily stopped. Justin has retired to his room and video game, Autumn is online and Amanda is painting in the kitchen while Maxine sits next to me watching a Christmas movie. Now all I need to do is get my Christmas shopping done, er, started.
Merry Christmas, from Steve, Linda, Autumn, Amanda, Maxine and Justin Sherwood, 2007
